WashPost admits its “fake news” story … is FAKE!

washingtonMike Adams – A few days ago, I wrote about how the Washington Post was committing “credibility suicide” with its obviously fabricated Craig Timberg story accusing Natural News and 199 other websites of being “fake news” sources controlled by the Russian government. Now, after the discredited paper has been threatened with lawsuits by several of the websites named in the WashPost’s cited source, they’ve all but admitted their entire story was surely fake to begin with.

Wednesday evening, the Washington Post added an editor’s note to the top of their story which essentially admits the Washington Post slandered and defamed 200 websites by reporting fabricated, false news derived from sources that even they no longer think are legitimate. Without offering any direct apology or retraction of their blatantly false and extremely irresponsible “fake news” story, Washington Post editors have now added this “weasel words” half-apology:

Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.

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The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills for a Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control of the Narrative

postCharles Hugh SmithI was amused to find my site listed on the now-infamous list of purportedly Russian-controlled propaganda sites cited by The Washington Post. I find it amusing because I invite anyone to search my 3,600-page archive of published material over the past decade (which includes some guest posts and poems) and identify a single pro-Russia or pro-Russian foreign policy entry.

If anything, my perspective is pro-US dollar, pro-liberty, pro-open markets, pro-local control, pro-free-press, pro-innovation, and pro-opportunities to rebuild America’s abandoned, decaying localized economies: in other words, the exact opposite of Russian propaganda.

My “crime” is a simple one: challenging the ruling elite’s narrative. Labeling all dissent “enemy propaganda” is of course the classic first phase of state-sponsored propaganda and the favorite tool of well-paid illiberal apologists for an illiberal regime.

Labeling everyone who dissents or questions the ruling elite’s narrative as tools of an enemy power is classic McCarthy-era witch-hunting, i.e. a broad-brush way of marginalizing and silencing critics with an accusation that is easy to fabricate but difficult to prove.

Such unsupported slander is a classic propaganda technique. It has more in common with Nazi propaganda than with real journalism.

The real useful-idiot shills are the editors and hacks paid by the Washington Post, who are busy penning articles such as “Why the electoral college should choose Hillary Clinton”. Isn’t this fundamentally a call to over-ride the Constitutional framework of the republic’s democracy?

In other words, the ruling elite’s candidate lost, so let’s subvert democracy to “right this terrible wrong” that was wrought by fed-up debt-serfs.

Substitution is a useful technique to reveal propaganda: if Trump had lost by a thin margin, would the The Washington Post publish an article “Why the electoral college should choose Donald Trump”?

Any site suggesting such an outlandish subversion of American democracy would of course by labeled Russian-controlled propaganda by The Washington Post. In other words, it’s OK for the organs of Imperial Propaganda to call for the subversion of the Constitution, but if someone else dares to do so, you know the drill: they’re labeled a tool of Russian propaganda.

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